into my arms
by callitwhatyouwill77
Summary: she possessed the singular ability to somehow make things better and, when it came to her, so did he - AU
1. Chapter 1

**into my arms - part I**

* * *

 _"love is an unconditional commitment to an imperfect person. to love someone isn't just a strong feeling: it's sometimes a decision, occasionally a judgement, but always a_ _ **promise**_ _."_

* * *

There are some days where he was lost and unreachable from the start. Days in which he'd wake up in a fog, when his head didn't quite seem to stick to the present. Normally, he'd prevail on Bates to help him wheel himself around the estate or tour round the farms and cottages- against the doctor's explicit instructions, avoiding his mother, and the family at the big house in case he cracked.

Most importantly, he would avoid Mary.

He didn't wish for her to take the brunt of a flashback or witness the moments of acute fear or depressive episodes he would experience when his mind shifted to nowhere at all and then ventured back to the horrors of the trenches. War. It was his nightmare and his reality and his past and it plagued him still. It was a rare occurrence, but some days the sickening dread and terror was unavoidable. It ended up alright, the feeling would be drowned by the fresh air of the Yorkshire countryside and the peaceful tranquillity of the Grantham estate. It was the familiarity that kept him sane and pulled him from his depths.

Only there were times, incredibly infrequent times, that he couldn't see coming. They were rare and unpredictable and hellish, but it was the sudden appearance of an acute uselessness that frightened him. He loathed being immobile, an impotent cripple that needed help with the most atrocious and simple of tasks, and when the knowledge of the years that fell before him consisted of being cared for like an infant invaded his thoughts, he often dropped so far into fits of despair that he felt like a petulant child on the edge of a tantrum. He wanted to break everything that surrounded him and yell until he was hoarse. The fact that he couldn't move himself far enough out of bed to even indulge his violent whims only frustrated him even more. He didn't want to exist like this. He simply couldn't bear it any longer.

Perhaps it was because the evening weather turned so suddenly. Perhaps it was just his mind playing up again. Perhaps it was the cracking of thunder and bursts of lightening that punctuated the rhythmic pounding of the deluge against the Abbey windows, but Matthew didn't feel himself clouding over until the sounds of guns and shells and shouting were filling his ears as if he were back there- back in hell. He could smell the mud and the remnants of gas attacks, the stench of the dead and the foul dismembered body parts strewn across no man's land. Rats ran across his feet. He was cold and damp, his sores and blisters and wounds returned with a seething vengeance, the overwhelming horror struck his lungs and rid him of breath.

He was crouched in the trenches, but at the same time he knew he would never walk again. He realised how degraded he'd become and wallowed in the pain of not being able to fend and live for himself. He disgusted himself, just how he knew he must disgust everyone around him.

* * *

Her hands were full, which is why she hadn't knocked. Before the war, she would never had been required to carry a tea tray, nor would she have wanted to, but it was once every afternoon that she was able to bring Matthew his tea and she cherished the conversation and simply the company that those visits afforded her. Other than these moments, the rules of etiquette and restraints of society prevented her from being alone with him. The doctor had not yet deemed him strong enough to venture outside so she could not push his chair and walk with him, but he had at least been brought home from the hospital and most evenings she'd find him sat in his chair by the fire, a book resting on his blanketed legs.

This evening was not one of those evenings. She dreaded to think what would have befallen, had she had the capacity to knock and wait.

For when she pushed in, she dropped the tray in one terrible tremble of her hands and everything on it was sent to the floor in a violent crash of broken china and hot liquid. She screamed for him to stop, as though the sickening smashing of the tea things was not sound enough for the entire household to come running, and immediately stepped over the debris of her shock to wrestle the gun from his hand.

"Matthew, no!"

He was sat, one shaking hand bracing a gun to the side of his temple and his cheeks passed his tears over his set jaw. Set it may have been, but his chin trembled all the same. He turned away from her reach when she made a grasp for the pistol and caused himself to fall sideways from his chair into the wall. He scrambled away from her, breathing harsh and rapid like a panting dog, frantically looking around him before he keeled in on himself and hid his face in his arms.

Mary stooped, changing her panic to control and slowly taking the hilt of the gun from his slacked grip and discarding it away. He pressed the balls of his hands harder into his eyes and she heard him mumbling something about mud through his rasping before he retreated against the wall further, eyes wide with terror, skin pale and slick with a cold sweat as he yelled.

 _Gas. Gas. Gas._

She knelt, bringing her hands to his hair, at a complete loss, and nudged his head so he rested just below her collar bone. His tears seeped into the breast of her blouse barely quelled by the soothing sensations of her fingers sifting through his dishevelled blonde hair.

"It's alright. It's perfectly alright." Her gentle mumbles calmed him slightly – only not enough to pull him out of his nightmare, and she reached for her handkerchief to wipe the vomit from his chin just as her Papa and Bates rushed in to see what the source of the commotion was.

"Mary- what on earth is going on?" Robert asked, alarmed and even more so when he saw the service pistol lying on the floor by his eldest daughter's feet. Bates took the initiative and discreetly moved it into an empty drawer in the dresser.

"Matthew's not well." Mary voiced, her resolve wobbling when Matthew groaned against her chest and whispered something about fixing bayonets. "I need help getting him to bed."

Without a further word, Bates and Robert took one of his arms each over their shoulders and manoeuvred Matthew onto his bed. Mary stood by, wringing her hands nervously, her heart still thunderously pounding at the image of Matthew holding a gun to his head. What must he have been feeling to think of such measures?

Another nurse came bustling in, probably on her Papa's instructions, and, together with Bates, she turned Matthew onto his side, giving him a shot in his hip which immediately made him droopy and drowsy. He still looked panicked as his eyes closed and Mary pulled a chair up to his bedside, laying a gentle palm on his forehead and stroking over his hair in a soft motion.

Matthew was unconscious when the nurse left. Bates went to fetch a maid to clear up the broken contents of the forgotten tray and bring up a second set of tea. Robert stood next to his daughter, watching her take one of Matthew's hands in hers and squeeze it gently.

"Mary," he started cautiously, "what was he doing with a gun?" Mary couldn't bear to look at her father, instead she closed her eyes and covered her mouth with a still steadily shaking hand.

"My god," Robert gasped, swallowing the lump that arose in his throat. "I had no idea he was so unhappy."

"Neither did I." Mary croaked. "I really thought he was doing well."

"I do feel so very sorry for him," Robert said, gazing down at the young man he'd come to think of as more of his son. "I'm afraid relying on others is a concept that works totally against his principles."

Mary closed her eyes. She wished it weren't true but it was.

"I'll stay with him. Someone should be here when he wakes." Mary nodded decidedly and placed a chair by his bedside, smoothing over his hair and gripping his hand in both of hers.

"I agree," Robert nodded. He moved to pat Matthew's shoulder briefly and for a second a blazoned paternal hue crossed his eyes that shocked Mary. "Should I tell Isobel?"

"No," Mary whispered firmly. "That is, it's not our secret to share. If he wants to tell Isobel that's his decision." Robert had to admit he agreed with that. "I know Bates won't say anything."

"I'll leave you. If you need anything ring or come straight to me." With that, Robert moved silently from the room, taking a moment once the door was shut to heave out a shuddering breath. Poor Matthew. Poor dear Matthew.

Neither of them knew how to gather the words to form an appropriate sentence, and for a long time after Matthew awoke he just stared in bitter silence at the ceiling. Mary saw his clenched jaw and trembling lips, but pretended not to for his sake. The more savage of his thoughts told him he should wrench his hand from her grip and turn so as not to look at her.

He couldn't look at her.

But he also couldn't bear to turn away- couldn't bear to lose the ounce of warmth and comfort that her hands clasping his provided. So, he stayed put, heaving all his remaining self-control to stop himself blubbing in front of her.

Dear god- he'd already sobbed and screamed and been sick- there was no need to degrade himself further.

"Matthew…" Her voice was imploring and hurt but it broke off with an anguished sting. The lump in her throat suddenly seemed to grow.

"Please. Leave me." He managed to hold himself together for those three words, his eyes hard and stubborn, still not looking at her properly.

"I'm not going anywhere." She stated plainly. She was every bit as stubborn as he was and determined to make him see it. "Not until you promise me you will never, ever, do anything like that, ever, again."

Matthew didn't say anything. The meaning behind his silence broke her heart.

"Just go." He said bitterly. "I don't make empty promises."

"I wouldn't be empty!" She demanded hysterically.

"Oh, but it would." He laughed, a hideous hollow laugh that was so unlike him it frightened her.

"Why?" She demanded harshly. "Why would you do it? How could you even think about such a thing?"

"Because I can't do this!" He broke. "I can't be an invalid for the rest of my life! I just can't. I can live with myself, much less expect anyone to live with me! I disgust myself. I disgust everyone."

"Oh Matthew, that's ridiculous!" She dismissed. He did not disgust her. They were his family and they loved him, he couldn't disgust them.

"I do not want to live!" He cried. "Not like this."

"Did you ever consider what it would have been like for us? To lose you? What about your mother? What about Papa? What about me!" Furiously, she wiped the tears from under her eyes and took a deep, angry breath, shuddering before continuing. "If I had done one more bed downstairs before taking the tea up. If I had come in a minute later I would have found you sat there with your brains blown out. Did you even consider how that would have felt for me? To walk in and find you dead."

Matthew closed his eyes, knowing he'd been selfish in that respect. He couldn't imagine how it would have felt for her to have found him dead in his chair with a gun in his hand. He felt sorry for it.

"What if it had been me? What if I'd been thrown off when riding and broken my spine? How would you have felt it you walked into a room and found me with a gun to my head? Would you have been fine with me offing myself? Would you have even cared?" She fumed and rampaged, mad like a raging bull as her words span completely out of control. "How would it have felt? To walk into a room and find me with a gaping hole through my head looking at you with unseeing eyes while my corpse…"

"Stop!" Matthew commanded. So loudly that it threw her off course and shocked her mid yell. "You know I care. You know I could never let you… do that. You know it would kill me if I found you like that. You know I love you, so why do you taunt me?"

"Because I love you!" She finally broke. "Because it would kill me to find you dead just as much as it would kill you vice versa."

"Mary…" he reached up a hand and wiped under eyes, cupping her jaw gently before pushing himself into a sitting position, heaving his full body weight with both arms- his physical therapy having paid of greatly.

"Mary, I'm sorry. Truly."

"Then promise me. Promise me you won't try it again." Her demand was soft, but none the less stoic and determined.

"I can't promise it, I won't make you a promise that I can't keep." He told her.

"Then promise it anyway." She said. "Even if you don't believe it now, if you promise it then you won't do it because you wouldn't go back on your word even if you wanted to. I know you. Please just promise me."

Somewhere in her uncertain words he found her desperation. Immediately, an urge in his heart willed the words to spill from his own mouth. He loved her enough to promise it, he knew he did, and he comprehended her logic. He would never break a promise to Mary. He couldn't. Which is why he couldn't say it- he didn't want to live like this. His mother told him it was just his pride, his deep-seated need to be self-reliant and his hatred of dependency, and perhaps she was right. But that didn't change his feelings.

It also didn't change that he loved her. And he loved her too much to hurt her. And he loved her too much to stop himself responding innately to her request.

"I promise you."

He could never break a promise to Mary.


	2. Chapter 2

**_Into my arms: part II_**

* * *

 _"the bright day is done, and we are for the dark." Anthony and Cleopatra – William Shakespeare_

* * *

There were still times when he simply believed he couldn't do it anymore. The prospect of his lonely future seemed so bleak and empty that he almost wished himself ill if only it meant that he'd no longer have to bear the nightmares and the visions of what he had yet to live.

He couldn't marry. He couldn't burden himself to any woman, least of all one he loved, and he wouldn't marry one he did not; he did not wish the unfortunate duty of caring for him on his worst enemy and would not subject anyone to it. He could never produce a child, never fulfil his duty to Downton by siring a son to continue the line, and now could barely look Robert in the eye- afraid and ashamed of the disappointment and resentment he was so sure he'd find there.

One day, when Mary, Edith and Sybil were all married and settled, his mother and cousin Violet had passed, Robert had gone and Cora had left, he'd be left as the reclusive and lonely Lord of Grantham, surrounded by nurses and servants, with no friends and no family in sight. He didn't want that life- this life- but the promise to Mary bound him to it and he wouldn't break it, no matter how much his despair drove him to wanting to.

"I shall have arms like Jack Johnson if I'm not careful."

Mary's voice from behind him snapped him out of his petulant reverie and brought him back into reality. The cool breeze whipped gently through his hair and sent a slight chill underneath the fabric of the uniform he still wore.

"I can wheel myself you know," he said, only a mere hint of the residing sourness in his tone.

"I'll be the judge of that," she quipped, knowing he wasn't quite being entirely truthful about the matter. His recovery was admirable for someone with that level of injury, but his trauma had inhibited it significantly- keeping him in bedrest longer once he'd been allowed home and prolonging his hospitalisation when he'd first been sent back from the front.

There were still times when she looked at him and saw the man lying still and muddied on a coarse stretcher, moments when she couldn't help but be reminded of how he had been when he'd first arrived home. He was better now, steadily on the road to recovery, and his relapses, though still painful and terrifying, were becoming fewer and further between, but she did still see it often- the mud-caked skin and the un-opening eyes.

She could remember everything so vividly still. He looked so cold. Beaten and broken beyond an inch of his life, never mind the unseen scars that were not visible to her now- whether they lay beneath his soaked through and stinking uniform or if they were imprinted on his mind, memories and horrors that he would never be rid of. She swallowed the lump in her throat, compelling her trembling legs to follow her sister over to the bedside where he was placed, taking the brown paper label that was knotted to a button on his jacket between her shaking fingers and reading it with a voice so unsteady and unsure, wondering with a raging and yet frozen mind how Sybil was so calm.

It hadn't taken long for everyone to clear away, Clarkson had found that there was little to be done until he regained coherent consciousness- nothing other than to clean him and dress his wounds. She found her next movements innate, moving the screen around his bed, fetching warm water, towels, iodine solution and bandages. Sybil was moved to another patient and so she took care of him on her own. Her fingers shook, removing his layers of blooded, muddy clothing to reveal scars- old and new- and open wounds that were irritated and sore. Whatever care he had received on his way over had been haphazard and careless, ignoring cuts that might have become infected, overlooking symptoms that should have been spotted long before he got to her. She washed him with precision, slow and careful with shaking hands and concentrated eyes. His face was scratched, skin a deathly pale with large red circles rimming his perpetually shut eyes. She shifted his pyjamas on, the blue-green silk slipping softly between her fingers, trying desperately to think about anything other than the large purple bruises the lined his back over his spine.

 _Probable spinal damage._

She busied herself to take it from her mind, clearing away after herself and leaving the screen surrounding the bed, intent on fetching Clarkson to re-examine him. She was sure she'd spotted the beginnings of a fever, the slight sweat that sheened over his forehead, the heat that emanated from his skin that looked so frigid with cold.

She sat back down in the seat by his bedside after that, having done everything she could think of from extra blankets to fresh flowers on his cabinet and resigned to stilling in her work, taking his hand in between two of hers and squeezing it lightly. She watched his still form, the body beneath the blankets too stiff and straight to pretend he was simply sleeping. It was hours before she saw his eyes flicker beneath his lids- a sign of dreaming, or so she'd heard, and she should have leaned in to wake him, but she didn't, choosing misguidedly to allow him to sleep a moment longer. she regretted it, for when his eyes finally did open, they looked panicked and afraid. She watched him as his body tried to lurch upward in fright and her breath faltered in unabated sadness when she saw he couldn't do it. He jerked uncomfortably, heart racing and breathing quickening, unable to settle or put stop to his horror before Mary intervened. The hair she'd washed hours ago was stroked back away from his eyes, her palms cupping his jaw and wiping the tears from beneath his eyes.

"It's alright. You're at Downton. You're home."

"Mary?" His voice was groggy, drug induced and laced with confusion, but unmistakably, and irreplaceably his own. This was Matthew, and he was alive.

"Go to sleep. You're quite safe, just go to sleep."

She wasn't expecting it to work, but it had. His eyes had closed peacefully and he'd fallen back to slumber with his countenance relaxed. In his last movement, he'd taken her hand, a weak grip that held fast and their entwined fingers had laid together on his gently rising and falling chest.

"Can we stop?"

His voice brought her back to the present and she glanced down at the top of his head, hair smoothed back cleanly as normal. She nodded, setting his chair by the bench and moving round him to seat herself beside him. She dropped a hand to his knee, rubbing it softly for a few silent seconds before removing it to lay on her own. She'd forgotten he couldn't feel it.

She opened her mouth to apologise for her lapse, but, knowing what was coming, Matthew rebuffed it.

"That's better," he smiled. "I'd much rather see your face when we talk."

"How're you feeling?" She asked, her voice pleasant to override her mounting concern.

He looked abashed at the question, but answered it anyway. "Better than yesterday, hopefully not as good as tomorrow. Sybil is still exercising us all to the bone."

"I should hope so," Mary mused, "it doesn't do you any good to slack on your exercises."

"No, I suppose it doesn't." the laugh on his lips died at the thought of the conversation they'd deliberately bypassed earlier. Her trip to Hacksby had been earlier that day.

"So, will you buy it?" He asked, out of the blue.

Mary sighed. "Probably. He says he wants to steal Carson to come and run it for us."

A smiled emerged on his face once more, smirk-ish yet well intentioned. "I don't envy you telling your Papa."

"Suppose Carson won't do it?" She proposed.

"Since he'd open his veins for you, I don't think there's much doubt." His eyebrow was raised slightly, a forlorn attempt at an expression that, years ago, he would've worn well with conviction.

"I don't have to marry him, you know."

She meant it, meant it with all her heart and willed for him to say something other than the response she knew he'd give. Richard would keep her secret, he'd be a near appropriate match and had plenty of money to return for the place in society she could afford him. At the same time, she wondered if he knew what she was really saying.

 _I love you. I'd never be happy with anyone else._

He didn't understand her. He couldn't decipher the encryption she handed him, and even if he had, he would never subject her to a marriage of such missing substance and abundant despair.

"Yes you do." His words were solid and meant, no matter how much he wished they were not needed to be said. "If I thought for a moment I was an argument against your marriage, I should jump into the nearest river."

"And how would you manage that, without my help?"

Sensing a turn of inner tumult, they'd both resorted to hollow humour to cover the raw emotions that threatened to take hold.

"I'd get you to push me." His sad smile had returned. "Seriously," he started, "I can only relax because I know that you have a real life coming."

A real life. Matthew had no idea, none, and she longed to tell him yet knew she couldn't.

"If I ever thought I was putting that in jeopardy, I'd go away and never see you again."

"You don't mean that." She sounded calm, but she wasn't. She was well aware that he meant it, the way things had gone with Lavinia being evidence enough to prove it. For that reason, she would never say anything to the contrary, knowing he could disappear from her life in a split second was an unthinkable prospect and would be an unbearable reality. She saw her life unfold in a disconsolate and miserable rhythm of pretence. Faking her love for Richard, feigning indifference toward Matthew, falsifying happiness for the rest of her days because her mistakes had led her to this. If she'd never let Pamuk… if she'd never given in, she could be with Matthew now- happy. Beautifully and tremendously happy. Perhaps, they'd even have a child by now.

"But I do." He stated plainly. "I am the cat that walks by himself and all places are alike to me. I have nothing to give and nothing to share. If you were not engaged to be married I wouldn't let you anywhere near me."

She snapped. Her sympathy for him still mingled with her own despair, but he'd wallowed long enough and he should have known that Mary was not one to indulge such dalliances in self-pity.

"You mean just like you wouldn't let Lavinia near you?"

He was taken aback by her outburst, visibly shocked yet remaining stationary as he always would. His pale cheeks were still slightly sunken with his under-indulgent diet, his body too thin and frail looking so early on in his recovery, but she saw his blue eyes flash with something- anger, retaliation, bitterness, sorrow – whatever it was if showed he felt the same as she did. Woeful in the restraint that tied them to their respective unhappiness.

"I can't marry. Not like this. I won't."

"And if someone should just want to be with you? On any terms?"

It was the second time she'd repeated the sentiment. And the second time he hadn't understood its full capacity.

He shook his head, they'd been through this before.

"You know I can't subject anyone to that. I can't offer anything! I'm barely the man I was, barely a person anymore. Mary, you can't understand- and god knows I'm glad of it, but I'm a monster now and you should barely be able to look at me."

"Matthew… that simply isn't…"

"I've killed people!" his broken voice was almost a yell. "People like me, boys that signed up for a laugh with their friends, men with wives and children and mothers. I've murdered them and I take my penance for it."

Behind his eyes burnt with anguish, but he resolutely pushed the threatening tears back.

"Matthew, this is not a punishment. You did what you had to do, and you are right," she said, "I cannot imagine what it was like, but whatever you've done, whatever you've suffered, you need not punish yourself. You've hurt enough."

"I will pay for the rest of my life." He said stonily.

"Only if you make yourself pay!" she demanded back.

"I must."

"Then you are wrong." She glared at him, determined to make him see. "You deserve happiness. God knows I can never have it, and I will pay for my actions with my solitude for the remainder of my life, but you _deserve_ it, Matthew."

"You more than I do." He leant back in his chair, his swimming eyes soft only when they landed on her.

She closed her eyes, shaking her head.

"Then you're wrong again."

"What can you mean by that?" A genuine query crossed his lips with mingled confusion and concern. He loved her, and wished for nothing more than her happiness, but unlike her, he didn't not think it was in his gift.

"I cannot tell you. You would despise me, and that I really couldn't bear."

He let her sentiment sink in with the heaviest of silences, but found it didn't take him longer than a split second to find fault with her words.

"I never would… I never could despise you."

Then what did she have to lose?

She told him everything. As hard as it was, she managed to expel the words from her memory into the air between them. She couldn't look at him. She didn't want to see his opinion of her evolve and demise before her eyes. she didn't think she could live through the moment where the love left his gaze, leaving barely concealed contempt in its place and allowing his look upon her to bear no more tenderness or fondness, no more affection or desire – to look at her as he might look at a friend who'd betrayed him.

Yet his behold never altered. His eyes clouded over slightly, but the anger she saw reflected there was not directed at her. She couldn't place his exact expression, but horror was certainly mixed somewhere in there.

"Why?"

The question she'd never expected burst from within him. She had no answer. No coherent one she understood fully enough to give.

He looked at her. Then looked away.

"Did you love him?"

"You mustn't try to—"

"Because if it was love—"

"How could it be love? I didn't know him!"

"Then why would you—?"

"It was lust Matthew!" His expression had changed when he looked back, eyeing her carefully and seeing the uncertainty in her conviction that even she hadn't been aware existed still. "Or a need for excitement or something in him that I… oh god what difference does it make? I'm Tess of the d'Urbervilles to your Angel Clare, I have fallen! I am impure!"

"Don't joke," he snapped. "Don't pretend to be something you're not. Not when I'm trying to understand."

"Thank you for that," she relented, quietly. "But the fact remains I am made different by it. Things have changed between us."

"And… he…" he pressed on, "Carlisle," he spat the name with such aggrieved disgust. "is blackmailing you with it?"

Her silence gave a better answer than any words she possessed could have done.

"You must not marry him!" He was defiant and resolute. Watching her pained expression with suspicion.

"There's something else, isn't there?" he pressed, his tone gentler now. She shifted, unknowing what his precise meaning was and yet feeling an uncomfortable inkling that whatever he was approaching was an area she'd tried to bury for years.

"Did he force you?" His jaw clenched, his blood ran cold, his heart burnt with an incandescent fury that sent sparks through his nerves. If looks could kill, Pamuk would be turning in his grave.

She shook her head. The answer she'd trained herself to give.

"I let him." She shrugged finally relenting her stoicism to replace it with a passive retreat.

He could see the tears in her eyes.

"But you refused him?"

"I don't know how he found my room, or even how it knew which one was mine. He pushed in. I asked him to leave, he refused. I told him I would scream, and he said it wouldn't make any difference. He was right, I would've been ruined if anyone had found him in my room." She gulped, pressing down the lump in her throat to will herself to continue. "He said I'd still be a virgin for my husband. That it wouldn't hurt. That is was safe." She closed her eyes. "He lied."

Matthew was frozen in horror.

"I let him." She repeated.

He shook his head. "He forced you."

"I let him," she said again.

"You felt trapped. It was rape."

She recoiled. "He never- he didn't force me, he didn't do anything like that…"

"He may not have physically forced you, but it's not the only type of coercion. Any man worth anything would never have done it. If you didn't want him to, it was rape."

She stared harshly at the ground before her. She shook with the effort of keeping herself held together, her hands trembling in her lap.

"Mary…"

His voice was smooth. His arms soft, warm and welcoming and she leant into the embrace he offered. With her face hidden by his collar, her eyes closed against his neck, she let him hold her together with his stable arms.

She'd sack Carlisle tomorrow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Into my arms – part III**

* * *

 _"How should I face the faceless days if I should lose you now?" - So Close Jon Mclaughlin_

* * *

He'd grown slowly away from his sullen ways; he'd smile more often and laugh more lightly and when she glanced at his face occasionally over dinner, she found the frown she was so accustomed to was fading. He was no longer the pale-faced fear-ridden soldier he'd been when he'd first returned. It was far better than seeing him stare up at the ceiling from his hospital bed, frozen in anguish and wide-eyed to try to push away his tears.

 _"I know I'm blubbing now, but I mean it – I'd much rather know."_

She hadn't wanted to be the one who told him. She hadn't wanted to be the one who informed him to his new life condemned to a chair and surrounded by nurses, but she'd managed it. She'd got the words out and suppressed her own emotions long enough to leave to fetch a cup of tea so he could be afforded the courtesy of crying without her present.

But he seemed happier on the whole. He grumbled at the attention of nurses, mostly assuming he was just another convalescent soldier, and complained, albeit fondly, of Sybil's ruthless exercise scheme, but the nightmares became fewer and far between, his spirit seemed mostly lifted and his moods were generally not so dark.

The weeks passed smoothly by. October faded to early November and the turn of the seasons came early that year. It was the coldest winter they'd had in a long time. Their morning walks were taken on frost laden ground and the fires burning in the grates of the big house were not nearly enough to warm the large open rooms. The sky hung white and cloudless, the air was bitter and biting – frigid in cold.

"You don't have to do this, you know," Matthew sighed, watching begrudgingly as Mary tucked a blanket around and over his lap. Her hands pushed the fabric gently over his legs and he looked down as she did so- willing himself to do what he knew he couldn't. he wanted to feel her, wanted to feel the warmth that should be surrounding him, wanted to have the ability to move and make the task easier by alleviating his weight on the chair he barely ever left.

"Well, I could fetch one of the other nurses if you wish, but you seem to have a track record of disconsolance where they're concerned." Her tone betrayed her, he could tell she had no intention of fetching another nurse. And he was glad of it.

"And that would be because the pleasure of their company could never measure up to the pleasure of yours," he replied, earning back a conspiratory smile for his cheek.

"I see you've gained a little charm back. That's good, although if you show such presumption again I shall have to reprimand you."

They both laughed lightly, tittering together as Mary pushed his chair outside to the grass.

She'd been afraid of herself when he'd first come out of bedrest to reside in the chair- hated herself for every time she looked at him and saw it rather than him. But she'd come accustomed to it, and the flickers of anger she directed her own way every time he wheeled into the room became fewer and fewer until she no longer saw the chair anymore. He was simply Matthew. The same Matthew he'd always been. Prone to more sullen moods, perhaps, plagued by memories he didn't wish to forget but couldn't bear to remember, yes, but he was, is and would always be the same man she'd kissed in the dining room, the same man she'd argued with at dinner, ridden with and raced with, talked with and laughed with, danced with for the entirety of Sybil's ball. Him and him alone. The man she loved. And he'd always be whole to her.

"I hear you were quite the sensation at the Fairfax ball," Matthew commented. He didn't need to spark conversation- their previous silence had been quite contented and comfortable- but he wanted to hear her voice, feel her soft tones wash over him and revel in the gentle sound. He felt rather strange, more tired than normal, more exhausted by his sleepless nights and more prone to slips of mind and bursts of temper. He needed relief, something to make him feel normal, and Mary had proved subtly talented at the augean task.

"I wish you had gone, I'm afraid the chance for any real fun was rather thin on the ground."

He sighed.

"it's a dance," Matthew pointed out ruefully, "there is nothing I am worse suited at."

Mary tipped her head sideways in amusement, humming as she parked him beside their bench and sat down next to him.

"Oh, I don't know," she mused, a smile tugging at her lips, "you could have waltzed with me on your lap."

His eyebrows shot up and he breathed out a laugh.

"Your father would have me strung up," he pointed out.

"nonsense," she dismissed, laying a hand affectionately above his where it lay on his thigh, "Papa adores you."

Matthew frowned.

"I must have disappointed him so bitterly."

"Oh, Matthew don't."

He shook his head. "I mean it. I am the end to his line. I cannot produce an heir, and that means that I cannot ensure Downton as a home for you, your sisters and your mother for as long as I'd like. You'll always have a home here for as long as I'm alive, but my life expectancy has thinned since my injury and this knowledge must be as saddening for Robert as it is for me."

She sighed deeply, irritated.

"You can't blame yourself- you fought in the war and you fought admirably, but, if you're going to sit there and feel sorry for yourself, I'll leave you here and now because I won't have it! I won't! Matthew this is ridiculous, you have your life ahead of you, a privilege that some people didn't get."

When she looked back, her lips turned down in annoyance, she saw he was shaking.

With an unpleasant rush, she was harshly reminded of the hospital ward once again. His cold uncomforting words and transparent skin. He'd been thin and sick-looking, disconsolate and dispassionate.

 _"Do you know why I sent her away?"_ _His eyes weren't trained on her, they looked weakly up at the ceiling and then switched to stare harshly down his blanketed body._

 _"I think so." She nodded but remained stationary in statute and sombre in expression._

 _"Then you'll know I couldn't marry her." His voice held a croaky undertone, the last of his slight fever clinging to his voice when he spoke. "Not now."_

 _She laid her hand over his, and, when he didn't move, she wondered if he'd even noticed._

 _He had._

 _"I couldn't marry any woman."_

 _"And if they should just want to be with you?" She asked. He didn't notice the slight desperate hint that still resided with her words. "On any terms?"_

 _It was a plea, a suggestion, a declaration of how deeply her love was felt._

 _He didn't hear it._

 _"No one sane would want to be with me as I am now," he said darkly. "Including me."_

 _She wondered if he had any inkling just how much he was loved. She wondered if he thought he'd be received with anything but the utmost kindness and affection. She wondered if he knew her Papa counted him as his son. She wondered if he was aware that, heirs or no heirs, he was too much a part of the family now for anyone to think of him as anything but._

 _And then his voice, low and afraid, snapped her out of it._

 _"Oh god," his face turned paler, his countenance screwed up uncomfortably, "I think I'm going to be sick."_

 _She reacted quickly, turning to fetch the bedpan from behind her and bringing it to the side of the bed. She moved her hand under his shoulder, bringing him gently onto his side and rubbing his back tenderly while he vomited into bowl._

 _"It's alright," she soothed. "It's perfectly alright."_

He could no longer hear her words, could no longer feel or sense anything around him. There was blood in his mouth and ringing in his ears, and he wasn't quite sure what had brought it on.

"Matthew? Are you quite alright?" Her hand was laid on his shoulder again and he closed his eyes against the rawness of the air, managing a thoroughly unconvincing nod.

"I wonder if I could trouble you to take me inside." His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed, gulping in a breath.

She nodded, arranging her skirts hastily as she stood. She gripped the back of his chair and pushed them back towards the warmth of the house, her insides twisting in unease at his turn.

* * *

"I'll call a nurse."

Of course, it was frightfully improper for her to be alone with Matthew in his bedroom but in the given circumstances she hardly thought it would be worthy of anyone's complaint.

"Don't," he muttered, "I'll be quite alright – I'll just rest for a moment before the dressing gong."

Mary scoffed. "I'm afraid I'm not giving you any choice in the matter. You'll need a nurse to help you into bed anyway and should you have some kind of flu or cold, it's best you are forewarned."

"Don't patronise me. I'm not a child, Mary." His look was abashed but she could tell he wasn't really too affronted by it. "Just because I'm an invalid doesn't mean I don't have jurisdiction over what happens to me."

"I said nothing of the sort," she raised an eyebrow. "You should know very well by now that, invalid or not, what I say goes."

With that, she pulled the bell chord by his bed.

"You're starting to remind me of Sybil when she governs our exercises," he grumbled, thanking her as she fixed another blanket over his shoulders. She thought perhaps the cold might have been getting to him.

There was a short silence in which they sat in respective seats by the made-up fire, casting their glance this direction or that without really seeing where their eyesight landed.

Matthew opened his mouth to speak, to alleviate the question on his mind, but shut it promptly, thinking better of it. She was about to ask the nature of this movement, when the nurse came in.

"You called, Sir."

Before Matthew could make a move of polite dismissal, Mary interrupted.

"Yes, Captain Crawley felt rather unwell earlier and I wonder if it were possible to examine him. I'm sure it's nothing," she cast a glance at the latter, "but we'd like to make certain."

The nurse nodded. "Of course, M'lady. Better safe than sorry."

Mary raised a pointed eyebrow in Matthew's direction. "Quite right."

She went to fetch the tea while he was checked over, the usual tray was handed to her by a footman who'd been given it by the kitchen maid and she took it across from the stairwell to his ground floor bedroom, only to realise that once she'd arrived there he'd taken the decision to bathe. A flurry of nurses had screened off the bathroom and she watched as they came and went with a heavy heart, feeling much like an interloper. She'd washed him before, but he'd been unconscious then. She wasn't even sure he knew now the ins and outs of the days and nights he'd spent in the hospital.

When he arrived on the stretcher, his body artificially straightened and still, she'd suddenly realised that she hadn't been at all sure what she should've expected. Half of her had naively believed he might've just walked in, still clad in his pristine uniform with a retrospective and far-away look in his eyes, greeting her with a handsome smile. The other half of her still hadn't foretold such a sight that she was met with.

He wore standard army distributed pyjamas – striped blue and white and yet blackened and muddied with dirt and grime that she dared not think of from whence it came. His eyes were circled a terrifying orange, his skin pigmented with the colour of his crude treatment, pale with scars that remained red, jagged cuts and nasty scratches that were only the bare surface of his injuries.

When she'd taken lift of his ankles on Sybil's command to lay him onto the bed, she'd felt how horribly cold his skin was, how utterly close to freezing his body had become in transit from whatever frightful epicentre of hell he'd travelled from.

The first night was the worst. Death had reached out for him with ashen hands, and for the second time he'd narrowly escaped its callous grip. The whole family had been there at some point or another, Cora had sat by his bedside for a long while- speaking to him like a mother would, feeling slightly guild ridden for Isobel's absence, and Edith had read a passage or two from a favourite book of his. Robert had maintained a collected exterior when he asked Mary and Sybil for a moment alone with Matthew, but when they'd returned to take up their nursing duties once more, they'd seen him in tears over Matthew's bedside, telling him he loved him as his own in a moment of comparative emotiveness.

However, it was only Mary left seated by his bedside when he took a turn.

She'd heard someone say before- or perhaps she'd read it somewhere- that the darkest hour was before the dawn, and yet if that were true it couldn't have been long when he started to convulse.

She'd been petrified that he had been enduring some kind of hideous fit, and yet when he started to scream incomprehensibly in his sleep she'd been far more fearful than the jolting caused by a prospective medical issue.

He had a fever when he arrived and despite his morphine-filled body and state of untouchable slumber, he'd managed to break it after hours and when she laid a hand over his, clutching it tightly, whispering closely to his ear that he was home, he was safe, he wasn't alone, he'd ceased his nightmares and slept peacefully for the hours until he woke in the morning.

And of course that had been the morning Lavinia had arrived, when Dr Clarkson had discovered the problem with his legs and when he'd broken her heart in a single sentence.

 _"Could you scratch my leg? It's terribly itchy."_

Then she'd been forced to break his resolve in three.

"He says you may have damaged your spine."

"How long will it take to repair?"

"We can't expect them to put timings on that sort of thing."

"But he did say it would get better?"

"He said the first task is to rebuild your health. And that's what we have to concentrate on."

She knew how much he must resent the life he was subjected to, how much he hated the lack of independence it afforded him, but she'd accept no more of him wallowing in his own self-pity, and was determined to make him see it.

* * *

A/N – recently I read the original DA scripts for season 2 and a particular note of Julian Fellowes interested me surrounding one of the hospital scenes which very vaguely inspired this chapter. It read: _"Matthew's being sick was shot from behind and, when I looked at it, I was afraid we'd rather missed a trick. Originally, I wanted the image to be rather more, in modern parlance, in your face. This was really because I'm always interested in how, when people you love are very ill, all sorts of things become possible for you that in the normal way of things would be completely impossible. You can perform the most extraordinary, intimate and even disgusting tasks without really thinking about it. That is the power of love. I wanted Matthew's vomiting to be revolting, so that he would be ashamed, while Mary couldn't care less. Perhaps the director was afraid that the viewers would be put off their pudding. And indeed they might have been. But anyway, that was supposed to be the message of the scene: the power of love."_


End file.
